


Every Time I Try to Bring It Down

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 20:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20318785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Zelda’s hobbies include reading foreign newspapers, birdwatching, and self-reflection.





	Every Time I Try to Bring It Down

**Author's Note:**

> Group chat August challenge: Florence and the Machine’s “Make Up Your Mind”

It’s a hawk, maybe.

Zelda can’t see its nest, just its perch in the highest and most leafless branch of the dilapidated tree at the end of the driveway. Hilda would be able to identify both the bird and the tree. But Zelda’s not Hilda and therefore lacks the insight, the eye for detail.

Maybe it’s not a hawk, but it’s some kind of bird of prey, regardless, and she often sits on the porch with a bourbon and a cigarette expressly to watch for it. She doesn’t know whether it’s best to sip it slowly or drink it down in one as she watches. She doesn’t hold any presupposition that she’ll witness its devouring of a rodent or small domesticated animal, but she does relish any time she sees its soaring and gliding. Her eyes track it as long as they’re able.

Whatever taxonomy this bird may be, it’s strong and free, and it kills when it deems necessary. It spreads its wings and flies for its own amusement; the power is on. It is an entity unto itself—all intuition and electromagnetism. That’s what the scientists have decided guides birds to their respective migration ports and obscure food sources, right? She read an article about it months ago and remembers very little about it. She’s not one for details although she fills her brain with them daily—in Danish, in Russian, in Twi—hoping something might stick. Nothing ever does. It’s all macrocosm in her brain, all generalizations and sweeping statements, all guillotine. Big ideas that are digestible in their big way, able to be chewed on ad nauseum. Or not chewed on at all, just swallowed whole, like a snake.

Zelda’s stepped barefoot into the soft earth, traversing trepidatiously across her lawn, attempting a better look at the maybe hawk and ambiguous tree. No matter how close she gets physically, she’s no closer mentally to a conclusion. She shouts at the bird to leave Vingear Tom alone, that there are plenty of field mice and feral cats around for it to consume. 

And now she’s standing half drunk in the gardening shed. She’s been imbibing on the porch, watching what may or may not be hawks, for the better part of the afternoon. And now the sun has set, and her eyesight isn’t what it once was, so she’s unable to follow the retreating, advancing, gliding, dancing avian forms. 

But as she’s standing in the shed—she’s in her pumps again—all of the same feelings are there, all of the same rage is there. She’s always felt especially something during a full moon, and there are no clouds obstructing her view tonight. Clear, bright moon and hours upon hours of meditation on the nature of predation, the executioner within her, arms so steady.

Hilda’s organized the shed so precisely. The lawnmower and the weed eater and their gas cans and particular oil concoctions are on one wall. Bird seed and mulch on another. And then hacksaws, loppers, pruning shears, rakes, axes, shovels, trowels, rototiller. 

It’s as if Hilda has masochistically assembled an arsenal for Zelda to peruse.

Surely Hilda must know her thoughts and feelings. Surely, particularly, Hilda must know her temptations. Surely Hilda must know how she has desired and desires and denies herself.

Zelda is half drunk and uncharacteristically sentimental and grabs the axe. She’s killed Hilda many times for many reasons with many weapons. She’s usually just used her hands—fingers on trachea, hitching breath on hitching breath. An intimate death. Zelda shudders at the thought: she’d never thought she’d be a killer. And yet here she is caressing this axe handle, knowing she’d done what she’s done so many times before.

Hilda’s sweeping the kitchen floor when Zelda enters, the axe slung over her shoulder.

Hilda hasn’t changed out of her outfit from that mortal’s shop. She’s working now and sweating now in a black shapeless rayon robe. Zelda smells her honest sweat juxtaposed with the stink of the rayon costume. She hadn’t been especially angry before, more like a raw nerve than anything else. But this infraction is a match on stray kerosene and scattered kindling. The synthetic smell like a pheromone grown in a lab, designed to anger her.

“If you’re going to make me do it, how do you want it done?” Zelda says. The blade of the axe is not very sharp. It doesn’t glint in the dim light of the dining room. But it’s definitely a presence, palpable and menacing.

Hilda deposits the dust pan’s contents into the trash can and then looks over at her, blinks, says:

“How have I ‘made’ you this time?”

Zelda’s brain flits between hawks and this kitchen. Zelda’s brain flits between then and now. Zelda’s brain flits in general. Zelda says,

“Let me live, or let me love you.”

This is not what she had meant to say. Maybe that lab-made pheromone had been designed for more than just anger. She juggles the axe to her other shoulder and takes in a breath. Well. She’s said it, and she’s not retracting it because it’s true. Hilda will do what she will with it now. And there might be blood about it. She hasn’t made up her mind about it, somehow feels it’s being made up for her by an outside force. A hawk, or whatever, does reconnaissance and commits before it dives for prey. Zelda wishes she were that diligent.

Hilda laughs as she replaces the broom in the utility closet. She leans against the kitchen island, looks Zelda up and down, says,

“Make up your mind, then.”

Zelda doesn’t put it past Hilda to have telepathically pulled that phrase straight from her own swirling but ultimately stagnant brain. As predictable and ordinary as it is to be so seen by her sister, it is also jarring, and Zelda unthinkingly loosens her grip. The axe clatters to the floor. They both jump at the sound of it, and she knows in that instant of wood thunking and steel gouging that this isn’t just about tonight but all the tonights that have come before and have been, somehow, just like this—combined, multiplied, placed into a tidy graph. She’s the asymptote and Hilda’s the curve she can’t touch. She starts,

“I’ve been breaking—” Hilda rolls her eyes and strips out of the rayon robe. Beneath is a white v-neck t-shirt and gray bike shorts. She flings the robe over a wooden chair and wipes her sweaty brow with a tea towel. Then she looks at Zelda with dark, sharp eyes. Hilda says,

“Pish posh, sister. It’s been me saving my neck. It’s been me with my back to the wall. It’s been me—”

“If I can’t drink the water—” Zelda croaks out, but she can’t finish, can’t look in Hilda’s eyes. She knows what Hilda means and is shamed by it, against her usual judgement. Zelda’s gaze is instead on the axe on the floor. It had been heavy, but it had just sat in her hands, now just sits on the linoleum. She hears Hilda’s movements—putting on a kettle, walking here and there and then—

“You never preferred water anyway. What’s this about now, love?” Hilda’s fingers are soft against Zelda’s jaw as she pushes, and they look at each other.

“What else can I do?” Zelda says.

“Plenty,” Hilda says. “For starters, you can stop this nonsense.” She gestures toward the axe.

Zelda jerks away from her touch. Killing has been her only recourse and outlet for so long. She’s loath to abandon it, however objectively loathsome it might be.

“You’re changing like the current,” Zelda says.

“Is that what you’re worried about?” They look at each other, and Hilda continues, “I never change. You’ve just been breaking your own neck for so long you can hardly see what’s in front of you.” Hilda’s hand is on hers, rubbing circles with her thumb. Zelda considers.

Come to think of it, that maybe hawk is probably actually a bald eagle. It’s always been too far away to tell exactly.

And come to think of it, Hilda’s always been and continues to be Hilda, but she’s been too caught up in herself to appreciate that.

“You always turn my hand around,” Zelda concedes finally.

“Don’t I just?” Hilda says. “A cup of tea and then bed, yeah?”

Hilda squeezes her hand and then goes to the whistling tea kettle. They again look at each other as Hilda pours steaming water into two cups. 

Zelda blows on her mug and then looks up, says,

“Will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Make up your mind,” Hilda says again around a scalding sip of tea. “To love me is to let me live.”


End file.
